Bottom Right Default
State Name: New Jersey
State Name underscore: New_Jersey
State Name dash: New-Jersey
State Name lower underscore: new_jersey
State Name lower dash: new-jersey
State Name lower: new jersey
State Abbreviation: NJ
State Abbreviation Lower: nj

MND NewsWire features plain and simple interpretations of industry related data and events written in a manner that maintains the interest of random readers while still catering to the perspective of a housing market professional.

Mozilo Speaks up for Countrywide in MBIA Lawsuit: "We were a world-class company..."

Dec 13 2012, 9:41AM

Even after paying a $67 million
settlement to the SEC and being banned from the mortgage industry Angelo
Mozilo, founder and former president of Countrywide Financial Corp still says
his company never made a loan "that we knew the borrower could not pay." Mozilo defended Countrywide in a deposition
made last year in connection with a law suit by MBIA, Inc against Bank of
America (BoA) which bought Countrywide in 2008.
The deposition was filed in the New York Supreme Court earlier this
week.

The MBIA lawsuit is one of many
brought against Bank of America since it acquired Countrywide. It is estimated that the bank has so far
spent more than $40 billion trying to clean up defective mortgages and improper
foreclosures caused by the mortgage company's lax lending standards.

But according to an article in Bloomberg, Mozilo said that he had no
regrets about how he had run his firm, and denied that Countrywide had caused
the housing crisis. "This is all about
an unprecedented, cataclysmic situation, unprecedented in the history of this
country. Values in this country dropped by 50 percent," he said.

Mozilo contends he only agreed to
the $67.5 million regulatory settlement in 2010 to protect his family. "It had
nothing to do with anything that I did at Countrywide or anything I did in my
personal life." Relatives "were being
harassed in school. My name was in the paper every day nationally and
internationally, accusing me of things that were absolutely untrue. I could not
have my family go through it anymore, and that's why I settled."

MBIA's suit in the New York State
Supreme Court is seeking judgments against BoA for home loans written by
Countrywide between 2004 and 2007 which were later packaged into securities. MBIA guaranteed payments to investors who
purchased the securities which the bond insurer maintains were riskier than promised. The suit claims that more than 56 percent of
some 200,000 loans were materially defective; an amount plaintiff's attorneys
equate to $12.7 billion.

Bloomberg
quotes Philippe
Selendy, an attorney with Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan which represents
MBIA, as saying that the risk should never have been passed to the insurer; "The loans should have never been in there.
The probability of default is exceptionally high." He said the loan files were missing key documents
and cited examples of loans where borrowers had substantially misrepresented
their income.

Another
spokesperson for MBIA told Bloomberg
that the company has already paid more than $3 billion in claims to investors
and that its claims against BoA total more than $4.5 billion. The firm is seeking $3 billion in damages and
repurchase by BoA of more than $12 billion in loans.

The bank's Countrywide division maintains that MBIA insured the
securitizations even though they knew the lender's loans were becoming riskier
and did not do proper due diligence before doing so. "Rather than accepting responsibility for the
insurance policies it wrote, MBIA seeks to walk away from its contracts," a
spokesperson for Countrywide said.

Mozilo, in his deposition, continues his long standing defense of his former
company. "I have no regrets about how Countrywide
was run," Mozilo said. "We were a world-class company in every respect."

"We never made a loan knowingly -- and it
would be stupid to do so -- that we knew the borrower could not pay. Never,"
Mozilo said. "All our loans had that one standard from 1968 to the end of my
rein at Countrywide."

His record $67.5 million payment settled
an SEC claim that he had known about the deteriorating quality of loans made by
Countrywide but continued to mislead investors even while his internal
communications described some products as toxic. He was accused also of insider trading,
accelerating his stock sales to make a reported $140 million. He admitted no wrongdoing in resolving the
accusations.

Comments

He did not pay $67.5M he only had to cough up $22.5M from his personal wealth. The other $46 million plus Mozillo’s legal fees were paid by Bank of America and insurance policies taken out by Countrywide.

Hi, if Countrywide was such a world class company, then why did they hurt borrowers with horrible mortgages? Aren't /weren't they smart enough to make profits without hurting borrowers? Nobody enjoys being foreclosed. It is one of the most unpleasant experiences out there, trust me.Eugenia Renskoff

Think about what he said: "that we knew the borrower could not pay." The operative word is KNEW. Did they know without a doubt that any given borrower, loan agent or both was telling the truth about stated income loans? Of course they probably 'suspected' but didnt KNOW. Angelo cleverly slithered around the subject with that line. They, like all the other lenders of the time, KNEW what they were doing though. They knew that a huge number of loans had to be fraudulent and end investors would be screwed. What a snake oil salesman.

Founded in 2004, Mortgage News Daily has established itself as a leader in housing news, analysis and data. Our innovative social media platform combines industry leading content and data with an active community of industry professionals, to accomplish our primary goal - keeping our readers informed.